So this feels weird. Kind of like writing an email to nobody in particular. Clearly I’m very new at the blogging thing, and I’m hoping I’ll start to feel a little more comfortable as I acclimate to the process. I guess I’ll start with a little about me.

As far as my professional life, I consider myself first and foremost to be a scientist. I’ve always been a scientist, really – from my early days of reading about Jacques Cousteau and learning what “SCUBA” stands for (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), to examining the physiology and proportions of animals through my (very limited) artistic endeavors. At some point, my curiosity found direction in the mystery of the brain. I got my MA in neuroscience in December of 2007, and I’m now working on my PhD. Let me just say that if you ever encounter an awkward silence in conversation with me, it’s a safe bet that you can break it by bringing up anything remotely related to the brain. I am utterly fascinated and in awe of the complexity, elegance, and power of our least understood organ.

In addition to being a scientist, I am also a teacher, and a fairly new one at that. Just over a year ago, I started teaching at a community college in the area after essentially no other teaching experience (just some very minimal TA responsibilities for labs at Baylor). I took the job because I thought it would be good experience, look good on my CV, and, let’s face it, anyone who’s ever lived on a grad student stipend knows that it never hurts to earn a little bit extra on the side. So I jumped in the deep end.

The class was animal behavior. They handed me a textbook and about two rules and told me to go for it. A class of 30 for an hour and a half twice a week.  I started off the semester frankly terrified – that I would say something stupid, say something wrong and have a student correct me, or, worse, say something wrong and have the students believe me. I mostly lived in fear that first semester. Despite what I felt was a shaky start, I accepted the offer to teach a different course the next semester. This one was adaptive psychology. I started off the semester with about the same anxiety as the first, but then about halfway through, I realized something that came as quite a surprise: I was enjoying myself. The course content was interesting, sure, but more than that, my students were responsive and excited about the material; they were asking questions – questions that I knew the answers to! I found myself looking forward to the mornings I got to teach, not dreading them. I am now teaching the animal behavior course again, and I have to admit, there’s nothing like that feeling you get when leaving a classroom after a great class. I think I might be hooked.

So that brings me to the impetus for this blog. I was fortunate enough to be offered a position as the graduate fellow with the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor, a position which gives me the opportunity to investigate the intersection of two things that I’m very excited about: neuroscience and education. That’s what this blog will be about (more or less). So stay tuned if you’re interested. More coming soon…